Category: Dairies

My phone was struggling with 3% battery left on March 24th Saturday when I along with my friend Roshan set out to M.S.Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT). Needless to say I had forgotten my charger (at office). Headed there to attend a TEDx event. We reached well in time and got the registration thing done and had lot of time left. The theme at TEDx was “Food for thought” , time was around 9 and only thought in our mind after registration was Food, yes Breakfast!. We roamed around the college to find a place to eat, could not find one which served south indian breakfast or in other words idli and vada(atleast for me it is! ). We had to be content with samosas stuffed with bread as breakfast. We headed back to college where my other friends from office had arrived. Time was around 1000 ,the stage was set and event kicked off with S M Acharya’s keynote.

The talks followed, first one to go on stage was Pravin Godkhindi , he spoke about music and the instrument he excels in – flute. A week before I had restarted practising my flute and listening to Pravin play inspired me a lot. He demonstrated different types of flutes, some very weird ones. Weird ones without blowing hole or the playing ones but can be played by swirling the flute. Another one is like an extra-large beetle , the sound it produced had no connection to its weird shape, may be it is because of the magician who is playing it. He also spoke about different technologies that is used to capture the sounds from flute faithfully so they can be synthesized or used for recording. He finished his talk by asking the interested ones to think of ways to record the sounds of flute. Later we had some time while next speaker occupied the stage. I made good use of it by speaking to Pravin, he wished me all the best for my flute practice.

Next to share his idea was Stalin , nope not the one from Soviet union 🙂 (the speaker himself confirmed the fact) . Stalin , documentary film maker who believes a story about suffering is powerful when told by sufferers themselves. He introduced us to his project Unheard media the manifestation of the idea he believed in. He didn’t miss the chance to mention that he watched news when he is in mood for entertainment!. Which clearly summarizes today’s mainstream media.

Varun Agarwal brought up an idea which is so counter-intuitive , at-least for many of us. “Don’t Think” was the message that he had to tell all of us there, he did so with humor. He is an entrepreneur who started Alma mater and few such ventures. Very appealing idea it was from Varun.

Then was lunch! menu was simple and food ,tasty.

After noon sessions were even better, fact that I didn’t see anyone sleeping validates my claim! It was JasonZachariah with his keyboard , he made us sing while he played his keyboard. He talked about how easily anyone can learn music if we can understand melody , rhythm and emotion. We simply had a great time.

Atul Chitnis spoke about simple yet difficult-to-carry-out-idea of designing products with real users in mind. He had a very valid point and it was well received. I felt he mentioned of apple products more often than required. May be I am wrong and my opinion could be biased as I follow him on twitter and the talk he gave was not something new, at-least for me. Since there were also many students in the audience , in other words budding engineers who aspire to be good product developers etc had a good takeaway from his talk.

I loved the next talk on copyleft by Sreekandh Balakrishnan. He successfully helped us understand what copyright and copyleft was and difficulties among copyleft license usage.

If I had to pick my favorite talk it would Soumitra Bhattacharya‘s , he spoke about leadership in India. Do check the video when it is uploaded as it is difficult to explain his thoughts about leadership is bit complex by writing.

K Vijay Raghavan spoke about demographic differences between India, China and Africa , and why India and China can invest/collaborate in research in Africa to bring prosperity in this world, which otherwise is in the verge of another world war.

Clock ticked 330 and I had to leave. My friends told later talks were as good as the rest of them. I am waiting for the videos to be uploaded by TEDxMSRIT team. In totality a day well spent, lots of positive vibes, good ideas, ideas to ponder , met some new people, a recipe for a great day.

While the day went well, my phone slept through out.

(I am not there in the picture since I left early) Vijay, Mani, Roshan, Dipak, Rohit , Akhilesh and Suneet (From left to right) Friends from my office 🙂

You can follow TEDxMSRIT page on facebook to get updates when the videos are posted 🙂 Also you can check more pictures of the event there.